


We Leave Tales of the Past to When We've Been Drinking

by excepttemptation



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Slavery, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Gen, Historical, Historical Inaccuracy, Lycans, M/M, Saxons, Slavery, Vampires, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-09
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-11-09 12:01:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/455210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/excepttemptation/pseuds/excepttemptation
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Logan, a lycan slave, flees his vampire masters.  With hunters close behind, Logan stumbles across Sean, Alex, Scott, and Charles, the younger son of Kurt Marko, the oldest vampire in Europe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Much credit to [spicedpiano](http://archiveofourown.org/users/spicedpiano/pseuds/spicedpiano) for helping creation/development. <3

“Wait-- did you not get the wine?”

The words ring out across the field, and Sean’s wary question has his three compatriots drawing to a slow halt. Charles and Scott exchange glances, while Alex shrugs his cloak from his shoulders. As they pause, the only sound it the distant suggestion of the fire that’s consumed the Saxon’s camp, some two miles east.

“That honey wine?” Charles asks, amusement in his voice, even if his expression is perhaps overly serious.

“ _Yes_ , it was going to be a present--”

“Come on, Sean, you think a bit of wine is going to distract the likes of Moira from the fact that you haven't got a pulse?” Scott scoffs, smirking, before joining Alex in peeling off a few layers. Their dark clothing is made darker still by splashes of blood that gleam nearly black in the near-blue light of the moon and stars.

Scott frowns is the slash across his tunic; he tends to complain spectacularly about mending clothes, especially his own-- it’s the primary topic of conversation as they take to shucking off the worst-worn of their garments, picking through their packs and trading borrowed tunics and belts. Their camp, tucked away properly in the woods, is too far for the moment; in another couple of hours they’ll need to circle back to the Saxon camp to put any remaining out their misery. A couple hours of absence allows any survivors the chance to escape.

Charles doesn’t mind survivors. Without survivors, there are no stories, and without stories, legends take much longer to grow. And the more people who abandon a fight out of fear, the fewer will have to die for it to end. The four of them have grown rather good at waging these particular kinds of wars, but Charles has yet to warm to the business of them.

No one thinks much of it, or comments at all, when he slips off for a walk. It helps him clear his head, and he’s never gone for long. There’s little for them to fear in this part of the world-- the far greater risk is the mischief the three of them make for themselves. His feet take a wandering path beyond the treeline, still close enough to hear when Alex starts a fire out of what seems to be sheer boredom, and plenty close to hear when Sean discovers that Scott has a skin of that honey wine tucked under his cloak.

Charles smiles to himself. In all the world - or, in all that Charles has seen of the world - the Britons’ was his favourite. He’d live here, if he could, if a home wouldn’t simply be one more thing to defend, to try and fail to keep for himself. Roaming, he thinks, suits them far better. By the time he makes his way back to middle of the field, the squabbling has died down to something rather amicable.

“Jewelry-- women like jewelry,” Alex insists, finally having unwound himself a bit. 

“He only learned that after figuring out they hate poetry,” Scott offers, his sidelong comment to Sean not disguised in the slightest.

Charles laughs, and catches the skin Scott tosses his way. He’s only just lifted the mouth to his lips when Alex’s head jerks towards the far side of the field. Alex stands, as if dragged up by his chin, and he inelegantly drags in a deep breath through his nose. The rest are quick to their feet, eyes scanning the trees, searching for movement. There’s too much blood in the air-- none of them can scent anything properly, and they all know it. They’re not alone, and apart from the thrumming heartbeat they can all hear, there’s something more. Something far more familiar and something terribly out of place. 

“Marko’s?” Alex asks, the question directed towards Charles, though none of them break glance from the treeline.

“None of Marko’s get travel this far north,” comes Scott scoffing dismissal. He can hear Sean gearing up to offer the obligatory correction, and cuts him off with a roll of his eyes and a quick, “ _Other_ than us.”

“Charles?” Alex presses.

“Not Kurt’s,” Charles agrees, consideration leaving his eyes, replaced by something sharper. “Cain’s.”

The quiet of the night is ruffled by the hiss of four blades slipping free of their scabbards.

“Slave hunt?” Alex guesses, sounding as though he doubts it himself. He doesn’t bother trying to catch a scent on the air again. “They’d have to fucking stupid to let one slip this far.”

“So, definitely a slave hunt, then,” Scott mutters, and the line of Alex’s mouth quirks into a smirk.

“Or a runaway,” Charles says, calmly enough.

A new degree of tension runs through Alex’s posture; Scott and Sean are always a little too eager for a brawl. And Charles-- Charles has always been a little too idealistic about lycan slaves for Alex’s tastes. Sure, it would be nice if lycans could just be casually liberated, but when they hunt, they’re indiscriminate. Brutal and reckless. There’s no time, however, for Alex to make that particular argument, because a figure all but explodes from the treeline.

He’s ragged, and collared, but looks nothing like the terrified, fleeing slaves Charles has seen before. Few enough run of their own volition; most are forced, for the sake of sport, to be hunted like game by vampire nobility. Charles can’t even tell if he sees them, or if perhaps he thinks them human-- the smoke in the air has to be clouding his senses, as well, and it’s not as though the four of them aren’t covered in perfectly human blood. Either way, he pays them no mind as he barrels between Alex and Sean.

For their parts, only Sean spares the lycan a glance.

“How many?” Scott asks, his voice gleaning that edge it takes before a bloodbath, and everyone's focus hones back to forest.

For a moment, Charles is silent. His eyes slip shut and he takes a deep breath. The Saxon’s burning camp, he ignores. The lycan, he ignores. The human blood that still stains their clothes and their skin, he resolutely pushes to the side. The woods before them hum with his bloodline. Eldest of the lot of them, Charles’s senses are the most keen to it. “Seven,” he says, in the same instant that his eyes open.

“Oh,” Scott supplies, sounding bolstered as he gives his shoulders a loosening shake. “We’ve handled seven before.”

Alex is the only one who doesn’t huff out a chuckle-- but after movement breaks into the field - nothing more than barbed shadow cutting trails through the night - and the night’s air rings with the sharp clash of metal and the lurching grunts of a proper fight, Alex and Scott are the ones who are laughing as they go.


	2. Chapter 2

Everything burns.  
  
It’s a high-pitched buzzing in Logan’s every nerve, muted only by exhaustion.  The only advantage there, he thinks, is that it completely blots out the ache in the pit of his stomach.  However, the moment he hears voices nearby, he’d have gladly traded the freedom from the stab of hunger for a burst of energy.  
  
“--eventually, anyway,” Logan hears the taller of the two brunettes saying.  
  
“Three days!  We were supposed to be back last night.”  The accent, Logan can’t place.  
  
“What did you want to do, Sean?  Just let him roam around, feral?”  This comes from the blonde.  
  
They sound like children, and Logan can’t help but hiss out a sound of distaste.  
  
“Don’t worry, my friend-- they grow on you.”  The words come coupled with what Logan first mistakes for a female.  (A female, not a woman, because you don’t call a walking corpse a woman.)  He speaks again, and it sounds like he’s apologising for the silver in the ropes, but it’s bleary in Logan’s ears.  
  
Only just before Logan passes out does he realise that he must have been hanging upside down.  
  
  
  
  
When Logan wakes, the burn that had cocooned him is gone.  Night has fallen, and the only warmth comes from the fire a few feet away.  Although he doesn’t open his eyes, he knows there are at least two nearby, he can hear them talking as they pass a skin of wine back and forth.  Were it not for the lack of heartbeat one the air, Logan might have thought them human-- he’s never heard of a vampire taking wine that wasn’t delivered cut with human blood.  
  
“Sorry ‘bout the irons.”  It comes from Sean, with the strange accent, if he’s recalling right.  Logan opens his eyes, and sure enough, it’s the ginger who’s looking right at him.  He’s smiling - like an idiot, in Logan’s opinion - as he adds, “You might be on the worse side of starving, but we weren’t quite sure you weren’t going to wake up swinging.”  
  
“Should’ve just let him keep on pretending to sleep,” says the blonde-- Alex, Logan thinks Sean had called him.  
  
“Go back to sleep, then,”  Sean calls, smiling enough that Logan can see the too-sharp points of his teeth.  “Scott and Charles will be back with dinner soon.”  
  
Logan’s gaze narrows.  ‘Dinner’ is likely to come in the form of some terrified young woman-- one no doubt picked off from the survivors of the village that had been burned to the ground.  He’d found it the morning after he’d lost Cain’s trackers.  Anyone who’d lived had long since fled, and any supplies of use had been burned to nothing.  
  
It snags at the edge of Logan’s darkening thoughts;  he should be remembering something.  Something here is important.  He very nearly has a sense of it before the world goes dark and silent once more.  
  
  
  
  
What sort of vampire cooks meat?  It feels like Logan’s first coherent thought in days.  
  
He must be seeing things, because when he wrenches his head towards towards the smell of roasting venison, four vampires sit around the campfire, and across its highest flames is stretched the leg of a deer.  Well, two are sitting-- Sean, and the short brunette.  Alex and the one Logan hears Sean call 'Scott' are busy trying to force a strip of cooked meat into Sean’s mouth.  
  
“Don’t be such an infant, you _used_ to eat this stuff, right?”  Alex is laughing.  
  
“What’d I tell you?  Picky eater,”  Scott grins, just before they tumble backwards over the log they’d been perched atop.  
  
“Pampered!”  Alex agrees, just before Sean smears a mess of dirt and moss at the side of Alex’s face.  
  
Before it can turn into an all-out brawl, a crisp but commanding syllable sounds: “ _Boys_.”  When all heads turn to Charles, he’s just barely holding a smile in check as he goes on, “A little civility?  We do have a guest.”  
  
A grumbling acquiescence emerges on all parts-- the three of them right themselves, dusting themselves off as they resume their seats.  Sean tries a bite of the venison, seemingly of his own volition, before muttering something to the effect that he doesn’t believe it’ll make him sick.  
  
They act more like a pack than a coven.  It’s an observation that renders Logan a bit surprised when he notices the one who must be called Charles is moving towards him.  Logan immediately tenses, wary, trying to find where Charles mind be hiding a whip on his person.  
  
“I’ll do nothing to hurt you unless you try to hurt me,” comes Charles’s too-steady assurance.  Logan’s eyes flick back to the other three, and Charles chuckles.  “Try to hurt them, and they’ll hurt you well enough themselves.”  
  
All three immediately appear as smug as can be, but Charles doesn’t seem to notice.  He hooks a thumb under the delicate chain against his throat, tugging free from under his tunic a small key.  Logan knows this key.  All lycans do.  What Charles intends to do with it, Logan can’t fathom, so he remains still.  First, miraculously, the collar around his neck falls to the ground.    
  
Logan had been born to slavery.  For all he can recall, it’s the first time in his life the whole of his neck has been exposed to the open air.  The world around him seems to shudder.  That the shackles on his wrists spring open seems almost trivial, in comparison.  By the time he gets a grip of himself, he’s gasping for breath, panting like a dog on his hands and knees.  
  
But when Charles holds out a sizeable chunk of meat to him, it’s on a wooden plate.  “As much as you like, it’s yours.”  
  
The only thing that allows Logan to accept is that Charles says it as though it’s obvious, like he can’t understand why Logan is hesitating-- and all of it without one scrap of pity.  
  
More than half of the leg is gone by the time Logan slows down.  All the while, the three of them chat, all but ignoring him, except for the way one of them would draw a knife and carve off another hunk of meat, just before Logan’s plate was clear.  It sounds like they’re talking about politics, but the reference no families mentioned at Marko’s court.  
  
“You’re not hunters.”  They’re the first words Logan has said to them, and it curbs their conversation.  Sean and Charles look faintly puzzled, but the other two don more familiar expressions of blithe disdain; the similarity there is enough for Logan to suspect Scott and Alex are related.  
  
“Slave hunters?  No-- and we’ve seen to the few on your tail,”  Charles says.  “I doubt they’ll send more, this far north.”  
  
“‘ _Seen to_ \--’”  Logan all but growls out, before he stumbles over the obvious:  “You kill your own kind?”  
  
“We _did_ give them the opportunity to stand down,” Alex points out, holding an open hand out to Scott, who fills it with a half-empty skin of wine.  
  
“But you’re one of them-- one of his, Marko’s,”  Logan snaps, gaze honing sharply on Charles.  He smells the most like them, buried under the island’s smell of dirt and moss.  
  
Logan can feel it, the way the silence around him sharpens.  Though he’s tempted, he doesn’t glance away from Charles to see for sure if the other three are glaring at him.  
  
“His second,” Charles says, his amiable tone going just a bit formal.  
  
“The Bastard?”  Logan says before he can think better of it, but for some reason it makes the rest of them laugh.  No one in Marko’s court finds it funny.  Some people talk about Kurt’s second son quietly, with fondness, some with a sort of wistfulness that had always made it sound as though the Bastard Prince might drop by any day.  Those who spoke of him loudly, Cain, especially, only ever seemed to comment on his absence.  
  
Alex caps the skin and tosses it over the fire and the remnants of spitted bone.  It lands easily in Charles’s grasp, and he takes a drink before saying, “In the flesh,”  and Sean snorts a laugh at that.  
  
That there’s no love lost between Marko’s sons is the worst kept secret on the continent, though it’s harder to tell how Kurt feels about the mess-- or how Charles feels about his primogenitor, which is of more significance to Logan, at the moment.  
  
“You’re free,” Charles announces, the words carrying a definitive edge, like some sort of proclamation, and Logan can’t shake the sense that they’re words Charles has said before.  He holds his tongue while Charles finishes off the wine, and then Charles is speaking again, his voice back to casual ease:  “But we’re two days out from the Moon, and I reckon you’ve never been loose for one.  We can’t just let you loose-- too many humans, too close.  You might do something you’d regret.”  Charles’s eyes are so blue that they set Logan on edge, but his teeth carry only a nearly-benign sharpness, and Logan’s starting to think they’re just naturally like that.  “We will not collar you unless you wish it, to keep the Change in check.”  
  
There’s something not right about a vampire at rest who looks as though he’s about to start feeding.  Not that there’s much ‘right’ about vampires, in general.  And there’s something even worse about a vampire who can even suggest that a slave might go so far as to ask to be collared, but before Logan can point that out, Charles is standing.    
  
He’d been wrong about the wine, because when Charles tosses the skin to him, there’s still a bit left.  “Drink,”  Charles says as he settles his cloak properly about his shoulders.  Something to it leaves Logan certain that Charles is accustomed to having his instructions obeyed.  “Rest.  We can discuss it the morning.”  
  
No one else finds it peculiar that Charles vanishes beyond the light of the fire.  The three... boys, they return to a discussion about some woman, and Charles slips beyond Logan’s earshot.  Cain might have been right;  Kurt’s Bastard Prince might actually be insane.    
  
But that’s hardly a reason to let wine go to waste.


	3. Chapter 3

The first night of the full moon is not, Charles thinks, anywhere near a complete disaster.  
  
He can't help thinking he should feel more guilty than he does over the fact that he might have encouraged Logan to have a go at experiencing the Change.  Charles hasn’t seen a lycan change form in decades, and having seen it a few times already, he can’t help but be fascinated.  Slavery, with its accompanying silver-studded collar, prevents the Change from taking place.  It’s a notion he finds captivating, how metamorphosis can be held at bay by such an impersonal threat of death.  
  
They don’t bother lighting a fire.  They make camp, if only to leave the horses someplace they consider safe, before making their way deeper into the forest, waiting for the moon to rise.  Logan’s collar resides in the small bag slung over Charles’s shoulder.  With it in his possession, he can only watch as Logan breaks into a sweat, as his eyes cloud an inky black.    
  
Charles is all but blind to the unease of his companions.  
  
He can only watch, entranced, as Logan’s bones snap-- realigning and stretching grotesquely, until the awkwardly broken angles of a man give way to an impossibly large wolf, writhing and howling in the dirt.  The pain, it seems, subsides in an instant, and just like that, the wolf is off.  Whether he flees Charles and the rest or imagined hunters is ultimately irrelevant; they give chase, their deft feet keeping close pace, intent on keeping Logan safely corralled.  
  
  
  
  
Morning finds them all sore.  
  
Sean’s arm is slow to heal the gashes Logan’s teeth have left.  A vampire’s wounds heal almost instantly, except when inflicted by the teeth of lycan.  Sean bears it - and the bandages that cover from elbow to wrist - sportingly, quick to cheekily praise his own durability, but Logan fails to find much amusing in the usual banter as they break camp and head west.  
  
Logan’s stormy silence is the only disposition left without comment.  No one’s yet brought up what to do that night.    
  
For Charles’s part, he doesn’t address what seems to be Logan’s avoidance of the topic.  It's not hurting Sean that gives Logan reservations, he can't help suspecting.  Slaves aren't collared until they can walk, but that comes so young that Logan has no real memory of the Change-- or what it is for the mind to experience a loss of language.  Under the circumstances - tentatively trusting those who might assume the right to impress him into service - Charles can't blame him for wanting to keep his wits about him.  And the physical toll, no doubt, plays some role in Logan's considerations.  Nevertheless, it's no surprise to him that Logan doesn't ask for the collar.  
  
  
  
  
"We do have an audience to keep," Charles mentions, when they break the horses for water the next day.  Logan’s horse seems agitated, and has taken longer than the rest to turn its mouth to the stream.  Up the faint slope of a hill, Sean, Alex, and Scott wait while Charles lingers.  “We can't really afford a slower pace."    
  
It's a diplomatic offering, Charles thinks.  Another night as a wolf would leave Logan worse for the wear, and his pride is already a little bruised over the shaking heap he'd been at dawn.  So Charles waits, his fingers snagging momentarily on a small tangle in their near-white of his palfrey's mane.  
  
"An audience," Logan repeats flatly, and Charles resists the desire to sigh _that_ that is what Logan's focus settles upon.  
  
"With Moira."  Charles is quick to add, "If Rigodunum had a queen, it would be her; she governs for her son, until he comes of age."  There's little point in hiding the identity of their sponsor.  Logan's not one of Cain's spies, and Kurt has long since taken to insisting how disinterested he is in Charles's 'hobbies.'  
  
“She’s human.”  Logan’s words are more conclusion than question.  
  
“Yes-- and a busy one, with a people to protect.  We respect her wishes for their safety.”  Charles can practically feel Alex’s impatience radiating off of him.  It’s entirely unsurprising that Scott looks on with veiled interest.  A thick, silent exhale leaves Charles’s chest.  “I won’t put it on you without your consent, but as I doubt you’re going to ask for it--”  
  
“And with you holding the key, I’m not to worry, then?”  Snide derision is something Logan practically sweats.  
  
At that, Charles’s mouth quirks into a small, self-satisfied smile.  “The quicker we make our way, the sooner we’re to someone who can make you a copy.”  
  
“ _Charles_ ,”  Scott all but barks out, sounding startled enough that both Logan and Charles turn their heads.    
  
Although he says nothing else, his disapproval of Logan minding a key to his own collar is written across his face.  It’s not an offer Charles has made to either of the other two slaves they’ve uncollared in the past.  
  
Scott’s jaw looks like it’s about to lose the battle to keep in whatever else he wants to say, but before his better judgement crumbles, Alex is palming his shoulder, tugging him off to triple-check the fastenings of his horse’s saddle.  Their heads are tucked together as they talk, and Charles turns his attention back to Logan, whose figurative hackles seem raised.  
  
“It’s nothing personal,”  Charles says, once again cutting a relaxed and amiable figure.  “He’s simply a bit protective.”  
  
The slice of Logan’s smile borders on unsettling.  “I’ve yet to meet a vampire who shouldn’t be afraid of a wild lycan.”  
  
Charles laughs, and Logan’s eyes narrow; he doesn’t much care for being laughed at.  Logan thinks Charles must notice, because he ducks his head a little and seems to be trying to regain his composure.  While Logan waits for some sort of answer, Charles busies himself with adjusting the halter of his horse.  Chairon, Logan thinks he remembers Charles calling it.  
  
“Believe me, my friend-- if we thought you irrationally devoted to harming us, we’d leave you to the Picts.”  Which means nothing to Logan, but Charles clearly thinks he’s said something funny.  A scowl is a familiar sort of comfort on his face, it’s obnoxious that Charles simply shrugs.  “It’s not you he feels I need protecting from.”  Before Logan can get a word in edgewise about that, Charles is carrying on:  “And it’s not for _our_ well-being that I think using the collar as a shield from the change is a good idea.”  
  
“If you think _I_ \--”  
  
“We contained you well enough, but it wasn’t child’s play.”  Charles’s voice lashes out like a whip, so much so that Logan flinches, though he’s quick to blame that on the healing wound of his thigh.    
  
They’d told him it was courtesy of Sean, a shepherding method from when he appeared to be tearing off towards what they considered to be a main road.  As much as Logan wants to doubt it, he’s seen Sean practice with a bow.  That the arrow had only grazed his leg, Logan has to concede was probably intentional.  Apparently, that  had been what had prompted Logan to try to wrench Sean’s arm from its socket.  Logan’s own memory of the whole night was bleary, at best.  
  
“Four vampires can handle a lycan.  A human village?  Even with us tracking you, if you strayed from the forests, there’s no telling how many you’d kill, maim, or _turn_ before we could stop you.”  Charles’s gaze has gone shadowed, but Logan fails to notice.    
  
Charles’s persistent concern for humans, at large, makes no sense.  Every immortal Logan has come into contact with, vampire or lycan, seem to view humanity as little more than sustenance, in one way or another.    
  
When he looks up, Charles is already leading Chairon back towards the others.  Loathe to be seen as though he’s simply tagging along in a vampire’s footsteps, Logan stays where he is.  The horse they’ve given him lifts its head from the stream, and for the first time, he wonders where they got the extra horse.  They probably found it, after that camp had been burnt to the ground.  Exactly why a gaggle of vampires were methodically targeting a certain group of humans, he has yet to ask.  It seems strange, when Charles seems to place some sort of value on human lives.  
  
Logan rejoins the rest in silence, determinedly settling himself atop the horse he hasn’t bothered to give a name.  The silence in which they travel isn’t as easy as it had been before they’d stopped.  It lasts for about an hour, their pace steady, but not brutal.  
  
“You give me a key, and I’ll take the collar for the rest of the full moon.”   Maybe it’s stupid, to offer such a bargain, but Logan hasn’t failed to notice that Charles has made no real promises about delivering a copy of the key to his collar.  And Charles has already taken the collar off once, when he stood nothing to gain from it.  
  
Charles smiles as though he’s been given some sort of present.  “When we get to Rigodunum, if no one’s able to make a copy, I’ll give you the one from my neck.”  
  
Logan blinks at the pledge, and while Scott’s spine has gone stiff, it’s Alex who sends a worried glance in Charles’s direction.  
  
That night, Logan sleeps.  When he wakes in the morning, the collar is gone from his neck.  His back is sore from the awkward prodding of trees’ roots, and the fire’s long since gone cold.  The next night follows in similar fashion.  Uneventful.  Logan isn’t at all sure how he feels about that.  
  
Come the following morning, Sean tells him, far too happily, they’re not too far from Castleshaw.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Quick update, the rest to follow tomorrow)

‘Not too far’ doesn’t exactly pan out as Logan expects it to.  Although, it doesn’t pan out as any of them expect it to, apparently.  
  
A stop for supplies, Charles had said.  Logan suspects he means that they need clothes that aren’t either blood-stained or tattered.  For his part, he doesn’t exactly object; the clothes he has are borrowed from Scott, and no amount of his own sweat seems to be enough to banish the odd, subtle scent of the undead.  
  
It takes him over an hour to realise he has nothing of worth to trade or sell--  that he’d assumed Charles would be footing the bill.  Logan isn’t sure who it makes him more angry with: himself, or Charles.  Before he can properly sort that out, however, he catches the acrid smell of smoke and charred death.  
  
Sean and Charles lead their little expedition, side by side, caught in some conversation in a vowel-heavy language Logan doesn’t recognise.  They’re followed by Scott, then Logan, and Alex behind.  None of them seem to have noticed.  It grates at Logan’s senses, bitter and cloying, and he can’t help looking around, trying to find the source.    
  
A moment later, the conversation ahead goes quiet, and Logan can practically feel tension coiling through the rest of them.  Without so much as another word, the horses break into a run.  
  
  
The village is a smouldering ruin.  It had been nothing much to speak of, Logan supposes-- a small collection of squat buildings, their purpose a mystery to him.  Nothing remains but charred sticks.    
  
It’s no worse than Charles and the rest have left three Saxon camps, but the four vampires are silent.  Apart from his own heartbeat, his own breath, he hears no signs of life.  When he looks to Charles, for the first time, he sees a Marko resemblance.  He’s familiar with Cain’s explosive temper, but there’s something a bit more troubling about Charles’s tight reserve, the carefully laced control over a fury Logan swears he can smell on the air.  As if Charles takes this attack personally.  
  
“Scott.”  Charles’s voice is a hiss on the air.  
  
It’s a mere instant before hoofbeats against the ground send Scott off, through the heart of the village, then heading east.  Scott, it seems, is the best tracker of the lot of them.    
  
There’s no discussion as they follow.  Logan doesn’t even know why, or _if_ , he cares, but he rides with them, either way.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the truly obscene lag between the last update and this one! Hopefully now that the ball's rolling again, I'll be able to do updates at least once a week.

Logan has seen them prepare for a fight before.  There’s usually a fair bit of betting that goes on, gambling on anything from the number of horses in the camp to how many of them kills the most.  Tonight there are no jokes, no traded barbs, no good-natured competitions.  Perhaps most concerning of all is that Alex seems a bit on edge.  As far as Logan is concerned, any time in which Scott is the calmer of the two of them, it’s a bad sign.  
  
The fight that follows confirms, if nothing else, one thing in Logan’s mind:  Sean is a lunatic.  He goes charging into a fight with a recklessness that would probably get him beheaded if it weren’t for the fact that Alex and Scott keep close tabs on him.  Those two seem to have been fighting together for longer; their movements follow a certain cadence, a vague sort of symmetry that leaves Logan wondering just how long they've been doing this.  
  
He can’t remember where the sword in his hand came from.  It must have been the day before the first full moon.  All he remembers is Charles’s too-private smile as he’d pressed it into Logan’s hands, insisting that every free man worth his salt had a blade to call his own.  Later that night, when the fighting’s done - when Charles and his company have proved that they have to be origins of the fairy-tales about demons in these woods, when they all seem sated from bloodshed but not properly satisfied - Logan finds himself sitting in front of a fire, cleaning the blade.  
  
Saxons, Charles calls them - the men who’ve been slaughtered and fed upon - like the word is a curse.  Like a person’s place of origin is some kind of breed.  Logan isn’t curious enough to ask for more details; they’re the opponents to the clan of humans Charles favours.  Charles has disappeared, which Logan finds a little disconcerting-- and he can’t decide whether the others’ lack of concern should trigger some sort of assurance or suspicion.  
  
He can’t tell if they build a fire out of some deranged sense of courtesy for him, or because vampires simply assume the surrounding temperature and they’d prefer to not be chilled.  Either idea should be unsettling, but when Sean starts fondly, but inaccurately, recounting the part of the evening when Logan had snapped a Saxon’s neck with his bare hands, it’s all too easy to find his voice to correct him.  That he goes from correcting Sean to volunteering accounts of his own is something that slips by without his notice.  
  
  
“They’ve gone to ride ahead, explain why we’re late,”  Alex says as Logan staggers to his feet. Charles and Sean are nowhere in sight, and both their horses are gone.  
  
“Making excuses to some human lord?”  he bites out, the early hour making him no less pleasant..  
  
Although Alex is the one who rolls his eyes, it's Scott who says, “They’re friends.  We took a detour for _you_ , and she was expecting us back days ago.  She probably thinks we’re in some sort of trouble.” Logan hears it , and exaggerated tone of being forced to endure a child’s questions, and somehow, that seems worse than genuine annoyance.  
  
He has yet to figure out why Charles and his little clan are so invested in human politics.  Apparently, some tribe is at odds with another, and for some reason they favour the one led by a woman.  For Sean, it seems to be the basest of motives; from the teasing of the rest, it’s be easy to think Sean’s a bit in love with Moira.  Actually, Logan has yet to find evidence to the contrary, apart from the sheer absurdity of a vampire caring for a human-- but the longer he’s with them, the more sure Logan is that they’re all a bit mad.  
  
Were they any closer to Marko territory, Logan might suspect Charles of seeking to amass land or wealth or a fighting force to challenge Kurt--  but all they’ve done thus far has been to slaughter a few bands of humans along the way.  What truly distinguishes one batch of humans from the next, the sort to be butchered and the sort to greet amiably, Logan can’t yet tell.  They all leave him well enough alone, and that’s enough.  
  
“Charles doesn’t think immortals can hold any stake on this island,”  he says as he starts gruffly bundling up his things, mostly because it seems to bother Scott when he casually refers to Charles with any degree of familiarity.  “What’s so special about this place?”  
  
As far as Logan knows, there isn’t a civilised place in the world that doesn’t have some sort of vampire presence.  
  
“It’s cursed,” Alex shrugs.  
  
“Or blessed,” Scott grins. Though the curl of his lips is hardly friendly, it somehow seems more personable than Logan can remember coming from Scott before. In general, Scott seems less hostile, and Logan can't come up with a reason for it yet.  He tosses Logan a pouch with strips of dried venison inside, which strikes an obnoxiously familiar chord in Logan.  It itches along the back of his neck, the idea of having food tossed at him.  “Or maybe their gods are just petty.”  
  
For some reason, that sets Alex to laughing, and then he and Scott are off, recounting some story of some fight that Logan can’t make any sense of-- not with the way they interrupt each other.  One starts a sentence, the other finishes it, and the middle is left, abandoned.  So Logan ignores them until the horses are set and ready.  
  
A few hours alone with Alex and Scott has Logan wondering exactly why the hell he’s still traveling with them.  By the time they stop to make camp for the night, he can only assume that whatever madness they've all got is catching, and the only reason he's still keeping their company is because a bit of it has rubbed off on him.  
  
  
“Look-- you’ll probably even _like_ them,”  Scott says as he settles down onto the ground a few feet from Logan, leaning back against the trunk of the tree that towers over their fire.  Something to the slant of his smile seems to insist that he’s mocking Logan already.    “They don’t even keep slaves.”  As if it’s something Scott finds ridiculous.  Like an oversight.  
  
“Are you expecting me to be shocked that humans manage to be more civilized than vampires?” Logan returns before snorting a scoff.  
  
He doesn’t really notice that Alex has taken to ignoring their conversation while he breaks down his horse’s kit.  After all, he does it often enough;  Logan just can’t tell if it’s an attempt to - in Charles’s absence - mimic Charles’s penchant for getting lost in his own thoughts, or if Alex just happens to find Scott’s conversations as tedious as Logan does and simply happens to have the advantage of years of practice when it comes to blocking out the sound of Scott’s voice.  
  
If Logan thought there was some sort of trick to it, he’d have actually asked Alex.  Hours ago.  As it is, when Scott barks out a laugh it grates at his nerves.  
  
“Civility?”  It rolls slowly off Scott’s tongue like a foreign word.  Hell, for all Logan knows, to Scott, it might be.  “Hasn’t got a damned thing to do with _civility_.  Sentimentality, maybe.”  
  
“... You think humans are too sentimental to hold slaves?”  Logan slowly asks, the words dripping with every ounce of his heart-felt belief that Scott is an idiot.  Alex must have been paying closer attention than Logan had thought, because he hisses out a sound as he shakes his head at his horse, which Logan takes to mean that Alex would agree.  
  
“Not sentimental enough.”  Scott’s tone has gone sharp and cool, and the words wrench Logan’s gaze back.  Before Logan can cobble together a coherent insult in the midst of his temper flaring to life, Scott seems to be on something of a roll:  “What, you think it doesn’t take a certain amount of care?  Feed someone, clothe them, look after them?  I mean, that’s a good master, mind you.  Someone like you, with as much as you’ve been beaten?  Only one of two reasons for that.”  
  
Logan can’t speak, even though Scott pauses;  he’s too busy trying to grind his jaw to the point of breaking.  It’s obvious, of course, that Scott’s seen Logan naked.  All of them have, during the few nights he’d endured the change.  And Logan’s forgotten what it had meant, had forgotten that his back is decorated with scars-- scars from silver-studded whips, scars from wounds that had gone too deep for even his kind’s ability to heal to erase completely.  Every vampire he’s ever known has been aware that Logan had been disciplined.  Every vampire he’s ever known has seen a lycan on the brutal end of a whip, and most have taken part in the practice at one point or another.  
  
But these four-- sure, Logan’s seen them kill humans.  In battle.  Not for sport.  He’s never seen them hunt for sport.  None of them have raised a hand against him.  Logan isn’t sure if he’d be surprised if they told him they’d never beaten a slave before, and the uncertainty claws at Logan’s gut.  He can’t help feeling as though he’s lost something, even if he hasn’t got a single idea what it would be.  
  
“Either you had a shit master, or you were a fucking lousy slave.”  
  
Logan doesn’t remember standing.  He doesn’t remember swinging his arm.  What lingers in his mind is the image of Scott’s infuriating grin cracking under the slam of his fist.  It hurts like hell but at least Logan feels like he can draw a proper breath again, even if breathing doesn’t seem to be anywhere as nourishing as drawing back his fist to pound it into Scott’s face again.  He only manages to strike Scott once more before he finds himself flat on his back, but it’s Alex, not Scott, who’s pinning him to the ground with a knee to his chest.  Teeth descended, eyes taking up that unnatural glow, he looks like he wants to take Logan apart, limb by limb.  Just in turn, Logan has the giddy, decadent impulse to find a way to rip Alex’s fangs clear out of his damned mouth-- it’s the only real punishment a vampire understands.  
  
But when a new voice speaks, they all freeze as they are:  Logan on the ground with Alex on top of him, Scott in mid-scramble on his way over.  
  
“Does someone want to explain what the hell is going on here.”  There are times when Charles asks questions that are not questions.  They’re orders.  And at the moment, it has Logan bristling, and he does nothing to bite back the rumble of a growl in the back of his throat.  For a moment, it's the only other sound in the night, over the occasional pop of the wood from the fire.  
  
“He hit Scott,” Alex says, just as Scott insists, “It’s my fault.”  
  
Alex glares daggers over his shoulder at Scott, who at least has the sense to step close enough to drag Alex off of Logan.  None of them ask why Charles is back, or where Sean is.  Logan pushes himself back to his feet as Charles steps over to the other two.  His gaze flits over Scott, over the split in his lip that’s already closed; the only evidence it had been there at all is the thick, dark streak of blood down his chin-- his chin that he’s got stuck in the air high enough for Logan to be sure that while Scott might be willing to take the blame, expecting an apology would be little short of insane.  
  
What’s strange to Logan is that it’s Alex that Charles looks to when he quietly asks, “All right?”  Although Alex’s chin is just as raised as Scott’s, he gives Charles a nod.  It seems to be enough for Charles to look back to Scott.  “Were you asking for it?”  Charles doesn’t sound as though he would find this surprising in the least.  
  
“Well he sure as hell needed to hit _somebody_ ,” is the only explanation Scott offers, and Logan thinks he can actually hear Charles rolling his eyes.  He says nothing else, though, before he gives his head a nod to the side, which Scott seems to take as a silent instruction to loop his arm over Alex’s shoulders and drag him off towards the woods.  
  
Logan finds himself face to face with Charles, whose expressions are tricky to read at the best of times.  How Charles can smile a bit sadly, and still have it come of as both indulgent and apologetic doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.  
  
“That something he makes a habit of?” Logan snarls.  “Being increasingly obnoxious until somebody punches him?”  
  
Of all things, the question pulls a chuckle out of Charles.  “Sometimes,” he nods.  “Usually only when he’s worried about Alex, though.”  If it weren’t for appraising look in Charles’s eyes, Logan would assume Charles had seriously misread the situation.  His confusion has to read on his face, because Charles gives a small sigh and adds, “Scott doesn’t much enjoy when he thinks someone else believes know more about slavery than he does.  And Alex doesn’t much enjoy it when Scott starts talking about the fact that he was one.”  
  
There’s no helping the way his head snaps in the direction of Alex and Scott, who are standing a bit closer to the horses than the fire.  Alex has transformed into something far less guarded than Logan’s ever seen-- a small, fond smile sits on his lips as he uses his thumb to swipe away the drying blood from Scott’s chin.  Logan’s almost grateful for it when Alex licks his thumb clean, because it’s disgusting enough to jolt Logan out of his stupor.  
  
“Alex was a--”  Vampires don’t enslave their own kind.  Did they?  It’s nothing Logan’s ever heard of before.  
  
“What?  Oh, no-- Scott was,” Charles says quickly.  “He was Alex’s slave.  Technically, Alex’s family’s, but when Alex took up with the army, Scott went with him.”  
  
Feeling as though he’s about to be sick is something Logan really thinks he would have gotten used to, by now.  He doesn’t understand.  He doesn’t understand Alex and Scott, or how they manage to be around each other at all, let alone look after each other.  
  
“When he was human,” Logan finally says.  It occurs to him that he's never seen Scott's back, that he doesn't know if Scott has scars.  If Scott has scars like his.  “When they were human.”  
  
“Yes,” Charles says quietly, his face gone utterly unreadable again as his gaze slides toward where Scott and Alex stand, heads ducked together in private conversation.  “Since they were children, until they day they died.”  
  
“The day they died,” he repeats, glancing at Charles, wondering just how much Charles is willing to offer.  
  
Another small sigh.  “The day I turned them.”  
  
That Charles leaves it at that isn't much of a surprise.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *is a bad person who can't hack consistent updates*
> 
> *hangs head in shame*
> 
> *.... puts McQueen's Shame into her DVD player.*
> 
> Also, this is a quick interlude before we move on to Logan attempting to talk to Alex.

There’s something obnoxiously serene about mornings in this place.  Cool, foggy woods with damp moss and dark soil.  
  
Not that Logan minds serene, so to say.  Really, he just doesn’t like the fact that he’s always the last one awake, regardless of the fact that vampires don’t, strictly speaking, _need_ to sleep.  He just dislikes what might be the assumption on the part of the vampires that he needs watching over.  As much as Logan wants to suspect that, though, when he blinks his eyes open, Charles and Alex sit a few yards away, seeming as though they’ve forgotten he was even there.  This time, the skin they pass back and forth - a new one, smaller than the others they’ve used for wine - smells too metallic to be anything but blood.  
  
When Logan looks away, he finds himself staring at Scott’s back.  His body obscures the motions of his hands, but Logan thinks he can see it now--the methodical, rote nature of some of Scott’s movements as he repacks the satchel on the ground.  
  
“You’re a slave.”  You _were_ a slave.  They’re the first words Logan manages to say to Scott’s back, and they’re offered as Logan finishes the bland strips of dried fruit they’d taken from the Saxon camp.  
  
Without seeming to miss a beat, Scott stands and slings the leather strap onto his shoulder.  Far too cheerfully, he replies, “You’re an idiot.”  He claps Logan a bit too hard on the shoulder as he walks past.  “Good game, Logan.  We’ll have to play again sometime.”  
  
Scott doesn’t look back as he steps over to join Alex and Charles.  
  
For once, Logan doesn’t much feel like arguing.  
  
  
  
“Well, the road ahead seemed clear,”  Charles is saying - trying either too hard or not hard enough - to seem casual about it.  “Around these parts, there’s no real reason to worry he’ll be accosted.  Not in Moira’s territory.”  
  
Logan’s hair is still damp, which is the excuse he gives himself to sit near the fire with the rest of them;  with this much fog in the air, he’s pretty sure he’d never fully dry off from dunking himself in the creek.  Besides, he’s not a slave anymore, he’s a free lycan, so clean clothes - or clothes that are clean enough - are a luxury he intends to take entirely for granted, just like the rest of them.  
  
Without glancing over to so much as acknowledge Logan, Scott simply pulls a sly sort of smile and muses,  “So, best to just let him go ahead on his own to announce our impending arrival?”  
  
For the life of him, Logan still can’t figure out what the fuss is about some woman.  Part of him is actually keen to meet her, just to see why the rest of them seem to care so much.  
  
“Despite the poetry, politics and courtship don’t really mix so very well,” Charles says, looking entirely too pleased with himself.  At the very least, Alex and Scott must think so, too, given the way they start to laugh.  
  
“There’s no way leaving him unsupervised around her is going to end well.”  From the sound of it, Alex must be expecting quite the show.  It’s strange to think of a vampire being so amused by his kin’s social embarrassment.  
  
“And how are you the expert on how to court humans?” Scott laughs, amused at his own exasperation.  “You’ve never _been_ a human courting another human!”  
  
“Ah,” Charles acknowledges with sage sort of graciousness, “but I’m the only vampire here who’s actually had a human lover-- while being a vampire.”  
  
Scott opens his mouth, but a moment later it’s painted all across his face, clear as day, that he doesn’t have a good counterpoint to that.  In the rare scrap of silence that follows, Logan can’t quite keep in the sceptical words, “You’ve... _why_ would you take a human for a lover?”  While there’s no escaping the suspicion that he’s being set up for some sort of inside joke, but so long as Charles is the one dangling the bait, he figures it can’t be that bad.  
  
Charles shrugs.  And grins.  “They’re warmer?”  
  
It’s an answer that sends Logan’s mind, unbidden, into the contemplation of what it would be like for two mostly-cool bodies to couple together, which threatens to turn his stomach.  And yet, when he realizes the rest of them are laughing, he can’t stop himself from chuckling, too.  
  
Better that, he guesses, than losing his lunch.  
  
But then his gaze snags on Scott’s, and the curve of Logan’s lips melts away, even as the one on Scott’s slices a little sharper.


	7. Chapter 7

“Why did you run?”  
  
Alex’s question breaks through such a long silence that Logan startles atop his horse.  Although from up ahead Charles and Scott glance back, Alex has the decency to ignore it.  Logan waits until Charles and Scott resume their conversation in their odd language;  it’s different from the one Sean uses, and Logan isn’t even interested enough to wonder which one Charles had come by first.  
  
Their pace today is deliberately slower, and while no one comments, Logan can’t conceive of any explanation for the ambling gait of their horses other than Charles’s apparent obsession for inter-species matchmaking.  
  
A few moments of silence pass before Logan replies, “Is it really so hard for you to imagine why a slave would want to be free of his master?”  
  
Logan’s gaze is deliberate on the ground before them, but he doesn’t miss the way Alex bristles.  
  
“Listen to me, lycan.  I’m not saying I think you deserved to be a slave.  And I’m sure as hell not saying that you deserve to be _Cain_ ’s slave.  But if he’s using you, to get to Charles, even if you haven’t got a damned clue, I will kill you.  I will open your throat with a blade, and watch you bleed out onto the ground.”    
  
There’s a steel behind Alex’s voice that prevents Logan from doubting his sincerity.  And Logan’s well-versed enough in vampire culture to know the insult of it-- what it means, for a vampire to observe a waste blood like that.  It doesn’t matter that lycan blood is toxic to vampires.  If Alex had a mind to kill him, a thorough gutting or a beheading would suffice.  Vampires see _shame_ in bleeding out.  
  
“You sure that’s in your best interest?” Logan returns, affecting Scott’s blithe insouciance, even he’s loathe to admit where he learned the trick of it.  Dispassion is the only real barb he thinks vampires understand; getting angry, surely, would only please Alex, and Logan’s not the least bit interested in pleasing Alex.  “If I’m Cain’s, and you cost him a slave, he’ll have your fangs.”  
  
He wants Alex to shudder at the thought.  A vampire without his incisors is no vampire at all.  They’re cast out.  And for all Charles’s ideals, Logan can’t imagine that even he’d be able to endure Alex’s presence.  It’s social death.  For all Logan’s attempts to appear casual, that Alex huffs out a hoarse, bitter sort of chuckle has him scowling.  
  
“No, it’d be just like last time--  Charles covering for us, insisting he’d compelled us to do his will, as our Maker.”  The words drip, harsh and scalding from Alex’s lips, with a vitriol that can’t come from guilt alone.  “It’s Charles that Cain wants to see put on his knees-- Charles, whose teeth they’ll be pulling out.  Again.”  
  
The sound of Charles’s name has Logan glancing to the side.  He can’t even fault himself for looking;  Charles has a knack for simply... appearing.  But when his gaze stretches out ahead of them, Charles and Scott are further ahead that he’d expected.  Possibly out of earshot.    
  
Logan has seen Charles’s teeth.  His fangs.  Charles has them;  they’re not supposed to be able to grow back, no vampire’s fangs have ever grown back after being ripped out.  “But he--”  
  
“He was **born** , you idiot,”  Alex snaps out, exasperated at last.  He looks at Logan as though he can’t believe he has to explain this.  “Marko turned his mother, while she was pregnant-- why the hell do you think he calls himself the Bastard?”  
  
“No, I _knew_ that,” Logan can’t help pressing, leather reins creaking in his grasp.  “But he--”  
  
“They’re different!”  There’s something satisfying about Alex seething, however quietly.  “Do you have any fucking idea how rare it is, to be _born_ a vampire?”  
  
Honestly, Logan hadn’t ever really thought about it.  He’d always thought it was just a trite distinction, just another bauble of social ornamentation.  It had never occurred to him that they might be truly different, in some significant way.  
  
“Other than Charles, there’s maybe a dozen other vampires in the world who’ve been born.  Nobody knows what the hell it means, only that it means _something_ \-- public opinion and the political sway held by the others are about all that keeps Cain in check and all that stops Marko from testing the limits of Charles’s immortality to the point of breaking.  They can’t kill him, but they have gotten good at punishing him.  And if you’re the cause of that, believe me, it isn’t me you’ll have to deal with.”  There’s something actually kind of disturbing about the way Alex’s eyes light up, Logan can’t helping thinking.  “I’ll let Scott have you.”  
  
There’s a finality to the words that Logan knows is supposed to be a threat, but something to it smacks of resignation.  It’s impossible for Logan to detest the notion of Scott’s - another slave’s - actions being hedged in by his fucking _owner_ , regardless of the consequence.  
  
But before Logan can say anything, Alex is talking again, and there’s an edge to his voice that has Logan’s thoughts stumbling back into the night before, when Scott had lunged at him, spectacularly furious.  And, Logan realizes, protective.  “Scott would enjoy taking you pieces-- stripping out apart, scrap by scrap, because you’re the threat.  You’re the risk, and you’re the one that poses a danger to the life _he_ picked.”  
  
Alex’s eyes gleam, shifting towards an icy blue that makes something in Logan want to recoil.  
  
“ _He_ picked this.”  The words are barely a whisper.  “For the both of us-- my will freed him, and he knew it.  But it didn’t matter.  He’s the one who dragged my body to Charles.  He’s the one who begged, who gutted himself over _my_ body, and if you think for a second that I don’t remember--”  Alex cuts himself off with sharp, hissing breath.  “You have no idea, what we owe to Charles.  You don’t understand what he’s done.  There are limits to what I’d do to a former slave.  Scott, on the other hand, has no such compunctions.”  There’s something cold in the curl of Alex’s mouth as he says, “But Scott’s always been keen on equity.”  
  
Alex urges his horse ahead, joining Charles and Scott.  For Logan’s part, he keeps his distance, and tries to ignore the violent flurry of emotion that crops up when his gaze finds itself lingering on the back of Scott’s neck.


	8. Chapter 8

“You must be Logan.”  
  
The words jerk Logan’s gaze away from raucous crowd in the hall, to settle on the woman who had somehow managed to all but sneak up on him.  Moira.  Sean’s Moira, as Logan has to see her, because her name has so often come out of Sean’s mouth.  He had expected her stern demeanor to shutter itself away, now that she was no longer addressing a few hundred men;  while it’s less formal, she seems no less immutable for it.  
  
Logan doesn’t get a chance to answer, but it makes no difference.  “Sean mentioned you, and I don’t recognize you in the slightest, so I figured you had to be Charles’s latest stray.”  
  
 _Stray._  Although her tone borders on fond, any respect he might have been starting to develop for the woman shrivels.  His expression must have darkened-- while Moira doesn’t retreat, her gaze upon him seems a little more appraising.  ‘Stray,’ in his opinion, is only a rung above words like ‘mongrel.’  The sting of it churns quickly from resent to malice.  From a vampire, he could at least expect that sort of thing, but for a human - for one whose strength is so fragile next to his own - to try to position itself above _him_ \--  
  
“Moira,”  Charles’s obnoxiously cheerful voice drowns out the rumbling growl in Logan’s throat.  Well, given the warm buzz of conversation around them, Logan is pretty sure no one would have heard it, anyway.  “I see you’ve met our friend Logan.”  
  
“Quite charming,” she says, her tone condescending to Logan’s ears.  That her smile to Charles is so genuine is somehow less of an insult than the fact that Charles returns it in kind.  Logan’s half a breath from snarling aloud when she goes on, “Sean was awfully cagey on the details on your acquaintance, so I’m left to conclude that you’ve placed some sort of embargo on the story?”  
  
While Charles’s chuckle proves to be a confirmation, all Logan can do is try to blink away his own confusion as he tries to fathom the possibility of Sean _not_ yielding to Moira’s every frivolous request.  Neither reaction gives Moira pause.  
  
“Now, you have to let me guess,” she insists to Charles, as though they’re playing some age-old game, turning to scrutinize Logan.  She lifts the goblet in her hand to rest contemplatively against her lip, although she doesn’t actually take a drink.  Another moment of silence passes before she slowly says, “Bandit.  Maybe part of some... band of ruffians.  That found our dear Charles on the road-- tried to rob Charles and the boys, and before you knew what was even going on, he had you too drunk to stand and you’re all gambling over who knows the filthiest joke?”  
  
Her guess does nothing to ameliorate Logan’s bemusement.  When he glances to Charles, at something of a loss, he finds Charles grinning.  
  
“I keep trying to tell you that the majority of that story was invented,” Charles insists with a practiced sort of patience, but seems no less amused for it.  “Unfortunately, the lack of detail is simply to spare you from boredom.  Logan was simply traveling alone, and low on supplies.”  Some of the light in Charles’s smile dims.   “And dangerous roads are made safer with company.”  
  
Something unspoken passes between Charles and Moira, which Logan ignores in favour of realizing that Moira doesn’t know what that he’s a lycan.  That she’d meant ‘stray’ as in ‘stray cat,’ or ‘stray child.’  Not ‘stray dog.’  He’s tempted to be grateful for the cover Charles’s story provides, but at the same time it stirs a gnawing warning in his gut, a reminder of how easily and how prettily vampires lie.  And Charles, apparently, does it better than most.  It’s sickening, in its own way, because the deception seems so sincere, and is so casually delivered to one Logan had thought Charles respected.  
  
“Here I thought you were adding to your troupe,” she says, even if her merriment is a pale shadow of what it had been, only moments ago.  The room around them suddenly seems more carefree in comparison.  Logan hadn’t really been paying attention to Moira’s speech at the beginning, but he thinks it might be a holiday.  Or someone’s birthday.  
  
Charles’s own reply comes too placid:  “I have my hands quite full enough as it is.”  
  
Moira opens her mouth to speak, but whatever she tries to say gets eaten up by a boisterous cheer from the other side of the hall.  All three glance over from their place against the wall, but only Moira and Charles smile when they see Sean holding up an empty mug in victory as the two men on either side of him attempt to catch up in their own drinking.  
  
“I was hoping we might have the chance to speak later.  Privately,” Charles’s words slip quietly through his smile, and Moira nods.  
  
“I’ll let you know when I have a few moments of privacy,”  she says mildly, reaching out to trade her full goblet of wine for Charles’s empty one.  “Once things quiet down.”  
  
Charles inclines her head, and Moira returns the gesture before she steps away from them, over to a small cluster of men too old to join in drinking games, but young enough to recount the tales of their own youthful antics.  
  
“Your business is your own,” Charles says, ensnaring Logan’s attention even as he slips his eyes back to the tables of young men.  “Who you are,”  and Logan hates that he finds it heartening, that Charles hadn’t said what you are,  “is your own business to tell.”  When he steals a glance in Charles’s direction, he finds Charles looking at him directly.  “None of us will take that from you.  You’re a friend we made on the road.”  
  
And fucking hell, but if Charles doesn’t sound like actually believes that.  
  
“I don’t think that’s how all of your... _troupe_ feels.”  Logan’s words come out rough around the edges, and it’s only then that he realises how many hours it’s been since he’s spoken aloud.  
  
For all Logan’s scorn, Charles laughs as though he’s made some sort of witty joke.  “You have to understand--”  
  
“I _have_ to do nothing,”  Logan snaps.  
  
“You understand fraternity.”  More and more, Logan’s growing to hate it when Charles turns questions into statements, but before he can say so Charles is carrying on and Logan feels somehow too tired to interrupt again.  “Scott’s concerned with your perspective.  He knows you’ve every reason to hate the people who abused you-- he knows because he hates them, too, and he’s never even felt the sting of their collars.  And, just as much, he hates the idea that you might try to lump Alex in with that lot, that you might fail to see the differences in your relationship with Cain and his relationship with Alex.  How would you feel, if someone tried to paint one of your brethren in Cain’s image?”  
  
Logan doesn’t understand why he lets Charles verbally escort him to such emotionally raw places.  Doesn’t understand how what should be harmless, vapid questions find meaning and substance on Charles’s voice.  He doesn’t dare speak, for fear of giving whatever magic Charles wields more to work with.  
  
“He’ll give you a dozen reasons to lash out at him before he lets you remember that you’re angry with Alex for being what you would call ‘an owner,’”  Charles adds, and somehow, that’s too much.  
  
“He _is_!”  
  
“Not like Cain.  They’re older than you realize, and the dynamic that existed between them as humans could never have existed between a lycan and a vampire.”  
  
Unable to ignore how much it feels as though he feels he’s being lectured, Logan turns, crowding Charles in against the wall.  It doesn’t matter that he suspects Charles could stop him, could put him to the ground, if he wanted-- Charles won’t.  Logan’s sure of it.  Not here.  Somehow, it’s both thrilling and disgusting, and Logan can’t even find a proper word to sum up how recklessly off-balance talking to Charles can make him feel.  
  
“You said he was Alex’s slave, that Alex’s family owned him,”  Logan hisses.  And, had he noticed, he wouldn’t have cared that a small group of young women have cast uncertain glances in their direction.  “There is no _nuance_ , there’s nothing--”  
  
“Would you ever lift a finger to spare Cain’s life?”  
  
The question, for all it’s simplicity, strikes Logan like a fist to the back of his head, and leaves his thoughts spinning so soundly that he doesn’t even know what to make of it.  All he can do is growl out, “ _What_?  What do you even--”  
  
“It was Alex, who was dying.  It was Scott, who dragged his body to my feet.”  Logan does his best to avoid being frustrated by how perfectly at ease Charles seems, because he’s pretty sure that’s exactly what Charles wants.  “Scott and Alex.... they disagreed about certain nuances of the afterlife.  Feared they’d be separated.”  Charles pauses, and covers a sigh by tipping back the rest of his wine, but Logan keeps his silence;  he’s learned by now that interrupting will only leave him with more questions than answers.  “They love each other.  Fiercely-- they _made_ brothers of each other, and I...”  
  
It’s the first time Logan thinks he understands the plait of emotions across features-- a tangle of fondness and wistful regret draped over things Logan knows far better:  longing and envy.  He doesn’t have to follow Charles’s gaze to know who he’s looking at.  An instant later, Charles’s features cloud over again with their insufferable ambiguity, and Logan doesn’t entirely begrudge the transition.  Not completely, anyway.    
  
But it occurs to Logan to wonder how differently the past two weeks might have gone, were Charles on better terms with his... kin.  Doubt tickles in through the back of his mind, and he doesn’t think he can ignore the possibility that Charles might be lying about that, too; it’s an uncomfortable enough thought for Logan to let a little more space creep between himself and Charles.  Not that Charles gives any indication of having noticed.  
  
“I had the capacity to preserve them, to keep them together.  And Scott,”  Charles’s lips quirk a bit ruefully, “can be remarkably persistent.”    
  
After another drink, Charles’s smile only spreads and Logan’s starting to feel exhausted in a way that travel simply can’t compete with.  He doesn’t bother hiding the roll of his eyes when he realizes Charles is sending a small, not-entirely-polite smile to a trio of girls who seem to be watching them with interest.  
  
And, of course, it’s when Logan opens his mouth to put to words, yet again, how little point he sees in mingling with humans - because, if nothing else, he’s quite sure that talking about Scott will only end the night with his fist getting reacquainted with Scott’s face - that Charles starts up again.  
  
“He’s cross with you, because he thinks you don’t like Alex,” he says slowly, as if he hopes this will improve Logan’s ability to comprehend.  
  
Charles must want some sort of sign to that effect, because all he does is lift an expectant brow at him.  Somehow, Logan manages to put to words exactly why that’s ridiculous:  “What makes him think I like _any_ of you?”  
  
He’s starting to think he really just to write off everything that comes out of Charles’s mouth as utter nonsense.  
  
But Charles laughs and Logan feels a little less like bashing his head against the nearby wall.  It is far better, Logan thinks, when they lapse into relative silence.  There’s no actual silence to be found in the hall, but the dull roar of layered conversations around them is, if nothing else, preferable than whatever it was they were talking about before.  Logan remembers the conversation, he just isn’t sure how the hell it happened.  Nor is he exactly certain how he finds himself leaning against the wall with Charles, watching the bustle of people passing wine and company between clusters of people and tables.    
  
When Charles insists on speaking again, at least it’s a simple announcement.  
  
“I’m going to get more wine.”  There’s something distracted to Charles’s tone, and when he glances over, it’s the three girls, again, who have snagged his attention-- though it doesn’t sound to Logan as though it’s wine Charles is thinking about drinking.  Before a wave of revulsion can overtake him, Charles adds, “And you look like you could use a drink, yourself.”  
  
Well.  Maybe not ’ _everything_.’


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two updates in one month? Insanity.

Mornings are too sedate.  Logan had been unaware that he could feel preference, regarding the time of day, but there it is: a growing dislike of the morning’s indecent levity.  The chirping of birds beyond the stone walls is entirely too chipper for what Logan sees as he stands in the flung-open doorway of Charles’s bedroom.  Three bodies lay tangled atop Charles’s bed.  Three bodies, and two heartbeats.  
  
It’s embarrassing, how long it takes for him to remember that, naturally, Charles has no heartbeat.  Vampires... they just sort of vibrate, humming with annimation instead of a thumping cadence.  The only corpse in the bed is Charles.  
  
“Did you need something, Logan?” comes his drowsy question.  Half his face pressed against the stomach of the darker haired girl, Charles’s eyes remain closed.  Neither she, nor the girl curled against her back, stirs.  Logan doesn’t know if he resents them or pities them.  Surely, they have no idea what Charles really is.  The darker girl has a smear of dried blood along her thigh, the fairer, a stain down her throat, but they’ve no open wounds to note.  Their ignorance and their weakness should make the pitiable.  
  
But shouldn’t he be on their side--  shouldn’t he empathize with another race being subject to the heartless whims of a vampire?  Of course, they’re both clearly still alive.  They’re not shackled to Charles’s bed.  And Charles is, he supposes, pretty in a way some women must like; they’d probably come willingly.  
  
It’s not right.  
  
“I want the key,” he says brusquely, unwilling to let Charles hide behind the smokescreen of his company.  
  
The way petulant lift of Charles’s head, the put-upon cloud that passes over his features is garishly, unsettlingly childish.  “It’s been two days,” he says, as if unable to wrap his mind around Logan’s impatience.  
  
“You said--”  
  
“I am not a locksmith.  I don’t make keys.  I enlist the services of a professional, and when one is willing expedite a job, I have no intention of hovering over his shoulder or harassing him into slighting his regular customers,”  Charles rattles off quickly, his annoyance lurking beneath the surface of his tone, as though Logan is the one being difficult.  
  
That Charles might have the smallest of points, Logan isn't interested in discussing, because he can't tell if Charles is being honest, or if he’s just stalling-- if he means to give Logan the key at all.  As much as he wants to see Charles’s deceptions as well-intentioned, it’s difficult to attribute him much altruism when he’s still tangled up with his _dinner_.  
  
By rights, Logan should leave just as violently as he'd arrived - and just as quickly - but it's the first time he’s ever been awake before Charles.  The first time he’s ever seen Charles show reluctance to rising from sleep.  Whether it’s that the sleep to be found in a bed is more captivating than the sleep had on the floor of the forest, or if it’s simply Charles’s custom to drag his heels on the way to the waking waking world, Logan can’t say. He does, however, find reason to curse his curiosity.  
  
The girl closest to Charles makes a groggy sound, and just that quickly, Charles’s gaze comes into sharp focus.  His hand curls around the back of her knee.  Logan knows the influence vampire can have over humans, and hasn’t ruled out the possibility that it’s heightened by physical contact.  Then again, maybe it isn’t, because the girl’s looking up at Logan.  But talking to Charles.  “I thought you said your friend wasn’t.....”  
  
“'Amenable,'” he supplies, suddenly capable of warm charm and low tones.  
  
Her sleep-scratchy laugh rouses the other girl, and she seems even less interested in waking up than Charles had been, hastily tucking her head underneath the nearest pillow as she blindly nudges a foot in the direction of her bedfellows, as though it might edge them back towards quiet.  
  
“But he’s attractive,” the first girl insists softly.  
  
Logan's half-hearted beliefs about vampire magic dwindles to next to nothing.  
  
“As are you, darling,” Charles assures her, “but I doubt even you could charm our dear Logan into joining us.”  
  
The floor threatens to pull itself out from under Logan’s feet.  Charles can’t-- he _can’t_ be suggesting--  
  
“Though you’d certainly be welcome,”  and now Charles is looking at him, and there’s a curiosity in those blue orbs that Logan can’t help but find disturbing.  Because.  Because it’s not as though lycan sensibilities are delicate by any means, but couplings are just that-- coupled.  And not-- oh, for fuck’s sake, not with a fucking walking corpse.  
  
With a snarl and a slam of the door, Logan finds himself in the corridor, trying to figure out just how serious they’d been.  Joking.  They must have been joking.  Charles finds that sort of thing funny.  And the girl-- well, who the hell understands human women, anyway.  
  
“I told you not to go in there.”  
  
The words manage to actually startle Logan, which is all the more humiliating because they’d come from Scott.  He’s only a small distance down the hall, wearing a smirk that just begs to punched straight to the floor.  
  
“A little _expansion_ on that would’ve been out of the damned question?” Logan snaps.  Scott had only offered a bland warning as they'd passed in the halls before just _letting_ him walk right in there.  To whatever _that_ was.  
  
“Little thing called ‘trust,’ Logan,” Scott returns, with a mocking jocularity.  “You’re the one who seems to think Charles has something to hide-- thinks he’d let me cover for him.  Besides, you’re the one who doesn’t see it as rude to go barging into people’s chambers first thing in the morning.”  It’s insufferable, how they can twist everything into someone else’s fault.  “Balin’s good-- he’s the best,”  Scott goes on, as though oblivious to how perfectly infuriating he is.  “And he’s never one to rush a job, which you should be grateful for.  With as long as you might live, you don’t what a key that’s going to wear out in a few years.”  
  
Years.  
  
Decades.  
  
For the first time, Logan’s considers the possibility that his freedom might last so long.  The he might evade capture or execution indefinitely.  That he’d have to worry about something like the durability of his possessions.  Scott keeps talking, because apparently Scott talks just because he enjoys the sound of his own voice, and it takes Logan moments, perhaps minutes, to return his attention to the words themselves.  
  
“--and seeing as to how you’re shit with a sword, it’s probably in your best interest.”  
  
What?  “--What?”  
  
Scott rolls his eyes.  “Alex has more extensive training, he’ll be a better instructor,”  he says as he turns, and it’s somehow inescapable, that he expects Logan to follow.  
  
Something about swords and combat and training and something about being on his own echoes in his head.  Only a moment later it slots together in his mind, that Scott and Alex apparently want to teach him how to fight.  Logan’s not an idiot; he’s seen them in battle.   Even he as to admit that they’re... efficient.  
  
“Charles said you went to war together.”  It’s only somewhat surprising, given that he’s keeping up with Scott, that Logan’s feet have decided to follow.  
  
Although Scott's feet don’t miss a beat, his gaze flicks briefly over his shoulder.  
  
“What, did you get him drunk?”  Scott might just as likely be joking as not.  
  
“I think you can thank Moira for that.”  
  
It pulls a laugh from Scott.  An easy laugh, which is somehow disconcerting.  “No doubt.”  
  
On impulse Logan grabs Scott’s elbow, pushing him in close against the wall.  A light flickers behind his eyes, the sort of hackles he can’t ever seem to rouse in Charles, and there’s something satisfying to seeing it now.  He’s sick of Charles’s half-stories, and Scott’s evasion, and Alex just on principle because somehow, _he’s_ the reason Scott’s so.... whatever it is, Logan is sure there’s more of it than usual.  
  
“How could you do it?”  he demands, the words hissing past his teeth.  “How could you beg for your master’s life?  I’ve seen what he did to you--”  
  
The glow to Scott’s eyes turns jarringly unnatural, his teeth sharpening under the curl of his lips to let out a low, barbed voice:  “Yes, he’s whipped me.  I can count the number of times on my hands.  And every time, every _single_ time, I was grateful.”  Logan tries to wrench himself away, because it’s obscene, because a statement like that has to be evidence of a perversity he can’t even begin to describe, but Scott meets him inch for inch, cutting into his space to bite out, “It’s not his scars you’ve seen.  They’re his father’s.  You have _no_ idea how much he--”  but Scott stops short and Logan wants to hit him again, for cutting himself off.  Which he?  How much he _what_?  The only reason he has no idea about whatever is has to be because no one will fucking tell him, and then they act like it's his damned fault.  “Better his whip, than his father’s.  That’s what love is, you fucking idiot-- risking someone’s loathing in order to spare them a bit of pain.  To spare them the scars.  Don’t think I’m stupid enough not to see it.  And if you think I'm too weak for it, you're even dumber than you look.”  
  
Logan doesn’t understand it.  Part of him almost wants to, but he can’t.  And he finds himself shoved to the other side of the corridor, space between the two of them welling up and solidifying.  Scott gives a sharp jerk of his head and settles his shoulders in a way that reminds Logan of Charles.  
  
“Now come on,”  Scott grumbles, resuming his stride.  “We’re going to teach you how to fend for yourself, so that when you run off," such certainty there, but Logan doesn't argue, "you getting yourself killed won’t be our fault.”  
  
He lets his thoughts slip to the familiar haven of imagining strangling all four of his companions.  Maybe not so much Sean.  By the time they make it to a small, secluded courtyard, Logan considers granting Sean a permanent mental amnesty, if only because while Alex has been assembling practice weapons, Sean had the good sense to assemble what could pass for breakfast.


	10. Chapter 10

Two days have passed, and Logan hasn’t seen Charles once.  It might bother him more if he weren’t so profoundly exhausted by the end of each day.  Fight practice with Alex and Scott account for only some of his tiredness; while among humans, Charles’s trio spends their time playing at being human, which apparently means contributing their time helping those under Moira’s protection.  Between the four of them, they manage to complete in a few days the repairs to the town’s fortifications that would have taken humans a week, at the least.

Although none of Charles’s progeny has ever seem pampered or spoilt, it’s still somehow surprising to see them resort to manual labour.  Well, it’s surprising to see Alex and Sean in such a state.  Watching Scott work strikes a low chord of dissonance, somewhere in the middle of Logan’s chest.

“They really don’t know what you are?”  he finds himself asking, quietly, over dinner.

They sit a little apart from the rest of the court-- or at least, Logan assumes it’s the court.  Few among those scattered along the tables that form a perimeter around the great hall look particularly noble;  they converse freely with the servants who bring out food and drink.  Some of them, Logan recognises as merchants from the market area.

“Some of them think we’re druids,”  Sean volunteers, happy to have a reason to ignore his still-full plate of food.  “Some of them think we’re all that remains of some ancient tribe that ruled over the whole island, long before the Romans got here.”

“And some think we’re a secret Roman sect, bound by a pledge that transcends the fall of the Empire, to maintain order on the island,”  Alex adds.  He shares a glance with Scott that has Logan wondering if maybe that isn’t a little closer to the truth.

“Either way, plenty of them suspect that we’re in league with the spirits and gods that protect their parcel of land, which is more than enough reason for them to leave us be.”  Scott’s preoccupation with his food is a curious thing.

Not that Logan really thinks about how Scott eats.  It’s just that vampires eating food is fucking ridiculous, all on its own, and then Scott just sits there, toying with it, bored.  He manages to cut short the thought before he can progress to contemplation about how Scott might play with a more sentient meal.

 

 

 

“Why are you doing this?”  Scott’s voice is low, but more plaintive than angry, even through the door.

Logon supposes it’s having so many humans around, the din of their thumping hearts providing enough cover for him to sneak up.

“Shouldn’t we all be allowed some degree of self-determination?”  Charles just sounds tired.  

No, not tired.  Weary, maybe?  For the first time, Logan wonders if the reason he hasn’t seen Charles around is because maybe Charles hadn’t been around.

“Three of you have that key.  Three of you.  In the _world_ ,” Scott snaps.

“Sharon.”

“Fine-- _four_.  For fuck’s sake, you know this can be traced back to you.”

Logan’s shoulder leans heavily against the wall next to the door, unsure of the politics involved, unsure if he should care in the slightest.

What if he is caught, eventually, with the key to his own collar?  Would he even have to say where he got it?  Would they simply _know_ Charles had had some hand in it?

Would he lie-- would he do anything to try to protect Charles and his ilk?

He doesn’t know what sort of response Charles has given, but Scott’s speaking again:  “I don’t know if this is you trying to be more human, or if you’re just drifting further out of touch with the species.”

There’s a dark sort of mirth to Charles’s voice, “I suppose you’d know better than I.  But as it is, we’ve done things Kurt’s way for enough centuries-- it’s time to try something new.”  A pause, and then, louder, Charles calls, “Logan?  Would you join us for a moment?”

 

 

Logan has his key.  He’s got clothes on his back and in his pack.  He’s got enough experience to be able to pass himself off in some human town.  Although he’s not even sure if that’s what he wants, he supposes it’s the only way forward.

Scott had left, last night, before Charles had gotten around to turning over the key.  In some absurd fashion, Logan almost wishes Scott had stayed; at least Scott would have provided some sort of indication as to what was expected of him, to stay or to go.  Charles.  Who the hell can ever tell, when it comes to Charles.

The air in the square still smells like morning bread as Logan makes his way towards the gate.

It’s not as though he has any reason to make showy goodbyes.  Oddly enough, when he thinks of where his feet are taking him, the only person he feels he’s slighting might be Moira.  After all, she’d let him in with no questions asked.  She thinks he’s human, so she’d probably expect him to abide by human customs.  Not that it’s enough to slow him down, but the thought crosses his mind.

“You’re really leaving.”  It’s not a question.  Scott’s observation, however, is laced with a veiled sort of criticism.

“You saying you want me to stick around?” Logan shoots over his shoulder.

“I’m saying I think you’re going to get yourself killed,” Scott returns, his voice suddenly much closer.

Logan stops short, enjoying the way Scott has to halt abruptly to keep from running into him, and turns around.  “And here I thought you’d kind of like the sound of that.”

Scott glares.  “Charles wouldn’t like it.”

To Logan, it sounds like a cheap evasion.  “And is that what it is to have a Maker-- to have someone else’s wants matter more than anything else?”

A snide, amused sound hissed through Scott’s teeth.  “You’ve never had an Alpha, never been part of a wild pack-- you don’t have any idea--”

“A _what_?” Logan bites out.  There are no ‘wild packs.’  Never have been.  Or maybe there were, once, before vampires came along, but there certainly haven’t been, not in-- not in...

Logan’s blood all but curdles in his veins at the curve Scott’s lips adopt.

“Hey!  Scott!  Logan!”

Logan recants every nice thing he’s ever thought about Sean.

“You coming?”

Although he has no idea what Sean is talking about, the fact that he arrives on horseback, with no less than a dozen humans in tow, makes Logan pretty sure he doesn’t want to go.

“We’re leaving within the hour,” Sean says.  With every ounce of his capacity to entice he adds, “First hunt of the season-- you’re not really going to miss it, are you?”

 

 

It’s impossible to recall how he’d wound up on a horse.  Logan can’t even figure out why he’s still here, why he’s broken off from the human hunting party to carry on with Scott and Alex and Sean and Charles.

Maybe he’s just finally lost his mind.  As much as he knows he ought to go, ought to leave, ought to just take his horse and run for it, he can’t think of where to go.  Running from Cain had been easy; he’d simply needed to be anywhere else.  At the moment, however, he could stay or he could go, and it wouldn’t make much difference.

He doesn’t have to leave.  And he doesn’t have anywhere to go.

Looking around - or rather, looking up, to try to spy the sky through the dense canopy - he supposes it must be getting rather late in the day.  Sometime soon, they’ll need to turn back, unless they want to spend the night in the woods.  Not that Logan really objects to the idea.

"..... Charles."  A smile is threatening to yank at Alex’s mouth.

Charles just sighs, turning his horse towards the sounds of movement through the woods that Logan can now hear on the edges of his senses.

"Are those picts?" he asks, because that seems to be the only group they ought to worry about in these parts.

Scott and Sean share a laugh that puts Logan's budding concerns to rest.

"No, this-- you're going to love this."  Sean is grinning, and that breeds a whole new host of worry.  "Charles ever tell you about the time he accidentally got married?"

“I did not ‘ _accidentally_ get married,’”  Charles says, his voice clipped.  “It was a simple misunderstanding I didn’t bother to correct.”

Logan can't quite fight the way one corner of his mouth starts dragging upwards.  The amusement, however, is shortlived.  It’s hard to find things humourous when a ring of archers kitted out in leather, furs, and war paint start closing in.

A lighter voice than he expects rings out, in a language he doesn’t know, and just that quickly Charles is smiling and dismounting.  Scott and company follow suit, and Logan at last lets his feet find the ground.

They’re surrounded, and no one’s wearing a friendly face.  No one Logan spots, anyway.  Nevertheless, Charles is all cavalier friendliness as he calls out, "Your accent is dreadful-- have I taught you nothing?"

From the treeline of the small grove, someone comes tearing through astride a large, dark horse.  "You taught me how to track without getting caught," the girl-- woman?  grins as she smoothly dismounts, the wild mane of her reddish-brown hair whipping around like tongues of a flame with her every move.

It cuts the tension in the woods.  Drawn arrows are lowered and the hunting party of barbarians seems to relax.

Even though she comes at Charles with an eager sort of enthusiasm, once they're within arm's reach, she comes to a quick halt and draws up her posture.  Charles does the same, and gives her a little nod, after which she holds out her left arm to him, wrist upturned.  Taking a small step closer, Charles extends his own in kind.

"Can you still do it, or shall I help you?" There's something teasing under the words, but the girl just flashes a sharp smile.

Using her right hand to steady Charles's wrist, she sets her teeth to his skin.  Charles lets out a thick breath.

"Nearly there," he murmurs.

Squeezing her eyes shut, her jaw works a little harder and Charles gives an almost inaudible sigh.  Logan's stomach threatens to turn when he sees a thick ribbon of Charles's too-dark blood slip from the corner of her mouth.  Before he can take a step forward, Scott's elbow hits him like a hammer to the ribs.

"It's fine,"  Scott insists under his breath, even as Charles turns his fangs to her wrist, in kind.

"She's _human_ ,"  he hisses.

Scott just shrugs.  "She’s kind of adopted.  She's family.  They're just saying hello." And there Charles goes, turning his teeth to her wrist, and Logan simply can't figure out why Charles would behave like this with a human.  "Stop being weird about it."

When Scott says things like that, Logan only wants to punch him.  Never mind that it's a perfectly normal greeting between kin, for vampires-- that girl standing there, _drinking Charles's blood_ is human.

At least it ends quickly enough.  Even if it is a little creepy, the way Charles uses his thumb to brush a trickle of blood from her chin.

"There's a good girl,"  Charles purrs out, entirely too proud.  He takes her hand and settles it in the crook of his arm.  "Now, the trio you know--"

"Who's the new one?"  she interrupts, breaking away from him.

She inserts herself very neatly into Logan's personal space.  He holds quite still as she places a hand on his shoulder leaning in close enough to _sniff_ him.  The vibrant green of her eyes is reduced to a thin halo by the swell of her pupils.

Logan finds it difficult to look away.

But then she's looking back over her shoulder to address Charles: "He's not a demon-- not like you."

"No," he says, with mock apology.  "And for all you know, you've just been very rude."

She pulls back, hands on her hips, looking at Logan as though this is somehow his fault.  "How am I supposed to greet you, then?"

When Logan glances past her, he merely finds Charles looking entirely too curious.

After a sigh, Logan tilts his head back, and just a bit to the side.  The girl's eyes flit over him before she mirrors the gesture.

"You're not a demon," she says again.

Perhaps it's a translation problem.

"Only some of the time," Logan finds himself saying.

For some reason, this makes Charles and the rest laugh.

“Logan, this is my daughter, Jean,” Charles smiles.  “Jean, this is Logan, a new friend.”

Jean looks him over with an air of challenge that prompts a snort of laughter off to Logan’s side.  He’s no sooner glaring at Scott than Jean is moving back to Charles, taking his arm once more.

“So, how is your dear mother?” Charles asks, as they head on foot back in the direction from which Jean and her lot arrived.  Alex catches Chairon’s reins and Scott takes the lead of Jean’s horse.

It’s obvious that the rest are meant to follow.

Jean, meanwhile, continues on as if no one else were around:  “Well, she’s a bit furious that she hasn’t seen her husband in two years.  So, if I were you, I’d give her another three years to cool off.”


End file.
